12 YVES DELAGE Photograph of a portrait by Gabriel Quidor (1904), by kind permission of Madame Lucie Coignerai-Devillers, granddaughter of Yves Delage. 13 THE 1902 CONCEALMENT ANDRE VAN CAUWENBERGHE "I have here before me, since an hour ago, two photographic images, exhibited at the Academy of Sciences by Monsieur Yves Delage, Professor of Zoology at the Sorbonne. By tomorrow, their story will have gone around the world, for they are the most mysterious, the most improbable, the most impressive pictures that one could possibly imagine. How can I tell, how can I express to others the emotion they arouse in me?" This was the preamble to Horace Blanchon's article in Figaro of 23 April 1902, the article that launched Prof. Yves Delage into the news 48 hours after he presented a paper to the Academy of Sciences. During the solemn meeting of Monday, 21 April 1902, Delage set forth, with complete scientific objectivity, the results of the work that Paul Vignon had obtained, based on the photographs of the Holy Shroud of Turin taken by Secondo Pia on the occasion of the 1898 exposition of the Relic. Born in 1865 of a wealthy family of Lyon, Paul Vignon pursued his studies for a career in science, but his great passion was mountain climbing.1 In 1895, having overexerted himself in his studies and his sport, Vignon suffered a nervous breakdown and spent a year convalescing in Switzerland. There he took up painting, in which he excelled rapidly, even to having a show in a Paris salon. It was in 1897, after he had regained his health, that Paul Vignon met Yves Delage, a distinguished scientist not only professor at the Sorbonne, but director of the Museum of Natural History and, since 1882, a member of the Academy of Sciences. Soon after their meeting, Vignon collaborated with Delage in the direction of Année Biologique, founded by Delage in 1895, then later became his assistant at the Sorbonne, sometimes substituting for him in his teaching. There was already talk about the photographs of Secondo Pia; but also of the historical objections to the Shroud of the very eminent Canon Cyr Ulysse Chevalier.2 John Walsh writes that Delage saw more in the photographs than could be explained by the letter of Bishop d'Arcis. It was Delage who, in 1900, first showed Vignon Pia's photographs. Vignon lost no time. That same year, he visited Secondo Pia, who gave him copies on glass plates. It was in the guise This paper is expanded from Dr. van Cauwenberghe's article "L'Occultation du 21 Avril 1902", La Lettre Mensuelle du C.I.E.L.T., Paris, May, June, July/ August 1990. 14 of a connoisseur that Vignon evaluated these negative images, for since he was an artist as well as a biologist, he knew that an image produced directly in negative in the XIVth century was inconceivable, consequently the very notion of a XIVth century forger was absurd. From this emerged a paradoxical situation. "It was through. Delage, an agnostic in religion," Walsh continues, "that the younger man [Vignon], a Catholic, came finally to his work on the Shroud. In the end, it was Delage, ironically, who compelled the world of science to pay heed to the relic." The Studies "At the instigation of Delage," wrote Thomas Humber, "Vignon and other scientists set about to investigate the Shroud."3 The two scientists were soon joined by the Commandant René Colson, Assistant Professor of Physics at the École Polytechnique; Armand Gautier, Professor of Biological Medicine, member of the Institut de France; and two journalists from L'Univers et le Monde, Dr. J. de Gaux and Arthur Loth. Their task was to determine whether the image could have been produced by natural means. Various experiments ensued; for example, Vignon had his face covered with a red powder, over which a cloth moistened with albumen was laid. The results, of course, were grotesque. Direct contact was not the answer. Contact and projection? Rene Colson had a suggestion. He had demonstrated by experiments that powder of freshly scraped zinc emits vapors that in a dark environment react on a photographic plate. The results of his research had been presented to the Academy of Sciences and published in the Comptes rendus of 6 July 1896. Based on this research, the question arose: Would not the vapors from a sweat-drenched body, in the darkness of the tomb, leave their trace on the Shroud? Could the linen have been somehow sensitive to vapors? According to St. John's Gospel (19:30), Nicodemus brought a mixture of aloes and myrrh for Jesus' burial; in the Old Testament, Colson found a Mosaic recipe for burial ointments that mixed these aromatics with olive oil. Colson and Vignon soaked linen cloths in a mixture of aloes and olive oil, using as subjects zinc-powdered medals and plaster casts. The results were encouraging, but there was still the question of bodily vapors. Then Prof. Armand Gautier suggested that the corpse of a tortured man, covered with blood and bathed in morbid sweat, must certainly emit strongly alkaline vapors, and not at all acidic, as in the case of an ordinary sick person who dies in his bed. And so an alkaline ingredient was added to the formula. The best laboratory results were obtained by moistening a plaster hand with ammonia, then covering it with a suede glove and exposing this to a cloth soaked in an emulsion of aloes and olive oil. While the results were only moderately successful, they were sufficient to assure 15 Vignon and his collaborators that they could demonstrate a natural formation of the image. The story of their experiments in a research without previous history will remain a lasting tribute to these men. For weeks and months," Delage wrote to Charles Richet,4 "we were obsessed by the disconcerting contradiction between a material fact, which was fundamental, and the apparent impossibility to find a natural explanation; a situation that would play into the hands of those who accept miracles, that my philosophical opinions cannot accept at any price. And suddenly, here was the natural explanation, luminous in its simplicity, chasing out the miracle.... When Mr. Vignon, with the help of Mr. Colson, found the scientific explanation of the formation of the image on the shroud, you remember the profound joy we felt to possess, at last, the clue to the enigma." All that remained now was to publish this remarkable work. Delage published "Le Linceul de Turin" in Revue Scientifique: Vignon's first book, Le Linceul du Christ: Etude Scientifique, appeared in April (it went into a second edition in May). Then, on 21 April 1902, Delage presented their work to the assembly of the Academy of Sciences. At the Academy of Sciences Under the dome of the Institut de France, the sessions of the Academy of Sciences are held on Monday afternoons. On Monday, 21 April 1902, there was a crowd to hear Yves Delage report on the exciting work that his assistant, Paul Vignon, had conducted on the subject of the Holy Shroud of Turin. The title of his paper was "Imprints produced on a sheet by emanations from a corpse." "The major part of the session," Dr. de Gaux reported in L'Univers et le Monde on May 23, "was devoted to the scientific demonstration of the authenticity of the image of Christ on the Holy Shroud of Turin." Humber reports that Delage was well aware of the singular importance of the occasion as he began reading the paper that he and Vignon had prepared. After discussing the history and properties of the Shroud, he detailed the step-by-step research and experiments of Vignon and his colleagues, work which Delage had overseen and approved to the very end. Science had shown the Shroud was not, could not be, a painting; science had demonstrated that the Shroud was not some other kind of forgery; science had even determined how the image was formed. "Add to this," Delage pointed out, "that, in order for the image to have formed itself without being ultimately destroyed, it was necessary that the corpse remain in the Shroud at least twenty-four hours, the amount of time needed for the formation of the image, and at most several days, after which putrefaction sets in, which destroys the image and finally the Shroud." Then he pronounced these words, which would have a considerable echo: "Tradition — more 16 or less apocryphal, I would say — tells us that this is precisely what happened to Christ; dead on Friday and — disappeared — on Sunday. The Man of the Shroud," the agnostic stated solemnly, "was the Christ." The secretary for the Physics sciences of this day's session was Marcelin Berthelot. A man of 75, scientist of international renown, inventor of thermo-chemistry and one of the founders of organic synthesis, he was member of the Académie Française and Grand-Croix of the Legion d'Honneur. But a positivist and militant atheist, Berthelot could not admit that the dome of the Institute should resound with the name of Christ and the applause of the audience. Traditionally, the speaker submits the text of his communication to the Secretariat so that it be published in the Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences. But that evening, against all precedent, Berthelot notified Delage to take back his text, telling him to rewrite his paper treating only of the vaporography of zinc, without making the least allusion to the Holy Shroud, certainly none to Christ.* Even today, preserved for posterity alongside some of the greatest inventions of French science, in volume 134, pages 902-904, under Berthelot's revised title, "Chemistry: On the formation of negative images by the action of certain vapors", one can read the expurgated text, falsifying the truth, in blindness and quite simply in hostility to Christ, in the name of a scientism that today is unsurpassed.